Surgical planning is a preoperative method of visualising a surgical intervention, to set out the surgical steps and bone segment navigation in the context of computer assisted surgery. Surgical planning is important in orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery, etc. Execution, or transfer of the surgical planning to the patient, is generally performed with a medical navigation system.
Some orthopedic surgeries, like knee or hip replacement, include cutting or drilling on an irregular-shaped a bone. Performance and accuracy of such surgeries improves if the surgery is planned pre-operatively. Surgeons are trained to use conventional 2D image data to prepare for their complex procedures. Such planning may be made from X-ray images of CT data sets or the like. CT data sets are large compared to X-ray images. Hard copies of X-ray images of the particular region of the patient's body for operation, such as a knee or hip-joint, or digital X-ray images on a PC based, cn be used for 2D operational planning.